Evaluation Again...

My opening to a film is called Hope. I have used the style of a homemade video whilst my title’s run to fit in with my planned synopsis. I chose the genre romantic comedy for my film as firstly, a personal choice and also because my research showed up that it was a popular choice for the female audience and also occasionally highly rated by males. I also came to this decision after watching and commenting on a selection of films which came under the romantic comedy subtitle. The intended audience for my film was females. The story within my film touches hearts and would hopefully appeal to a wide age range audience.

My media product uses conventions seen in a real media product as it shows the opening two minutes to a film. Like in a real media product as characters appear on the screen so do the actors names so that the audience can relate character to actor. I have used a popular style to do this in, using a easily legible font and fading the names in and out as the characters appear. Also, like in a real media product I have chosen a non- diegetic sound track to play over the film. This automatically creates a mood for the audience to pick up on and adds dramatic effect, like the sound of the heart monitor used towards the end of my media product.

My opening film credits does not represent a particular social group as the characters represent a mother and daughter relation. Connotations of my opening suggest that the person who ‘made’ the home made film, in the style I have filmed it, is very proud of their daughter and wishes to share moments of her life with others as many families stereotypically do.

The kind of media institution which may want to distribute my media product is a company like Working Title. This is because the intended romantic comedy genre of my film fits in with the films directed by Richard Curtis and also distributed by Working Title. The film captures a mood of sorrow and also of triumph which are regularly seen in his films, for example Love Actually and Notting hill. The Todorov narrative style is also similar with events happening throughout the film and ended up again in equilibrium at the end. Working Title would benefit from distributing my media product as it reaches out to a wide audience of both male and female of a varied age.

The intended audience for my media product is mostly females of a wide age range. Because of the family group and the events occurring in my media product, it may also appeal to males who can relate to the representation of a family situation. My media product was planned in order to attract a large age group. I think it is possible because whilst younger audience members can easily relate to the young character that appears throughout my film, older audience members, especially those with families of their own, can understand and emphasise with the parents and friends of the family.

I thought about different techniques to attract my audience and the main technique was the interesting story line, planned out in my film synopsis. Again, this uses a Todorov style storyline. I also planned to use characters and actors, if I carried on with my media product, which were likeable for the audience and well-known to encourage my audience to come and see the film, even without seeing a trailer.

The main storyline within my film is about a little girl called Hope. At a young age Hope gets a heart problem and spends much of her childhood in and out of hospitals. At the age of thirteen Hope is told that she has no choice and must have a life saving transplant. The rest of the film shows her fight with the law courts and hospital, her family life and the storylines which weave throughout these. My opening to my film is structured to look like a home made video that many parents make of their children when they are young. I have edited it into a montage to play whilst the credits are rolling. The actual filming of my media product did not pose any difficulties to me but once it came to editing my knowledge of technology was limited. Because I chose to use a personal camera, uploading my clips onto the computer was a long, boring task. After uploading them to memory stick each one had to be converted into a windows media format. After this my editing on Ulead was pretty simple. The montage style I chose meant simply choosing which clips to use and which not to use. The style I have used for my opening titles may look messy to someone who does not understand the thought behind it. It was easy to achieve this look as all I had to do was fade my clips together and add the audio track on top. This took some time as I decided not to have speech in my product. For each clip I had to erase the dialogue and put the music I have chosen on top.

Looking back at my preliminary task I feel I have learnt a lot progressing from that to my final media product. The time and work commitment involved in the prelim was a lot less than that involved in the main piece. Going from working in a team to working individually also proved difficult. Using my own camera also meant I came upon difficulties as uploading my clips onto the computer wasn’t as simple as it seemed. Working individually also gave me the chance to learn how to use the editing program properly and gave me complete freedom in choosing how I wanted my product to look.